Forest Ire: An interview with John McGovern

IT WAS mid-December 1977 and, in their championship-winning season, Nottingham Forest had gone to Old Trafford and massacred Manchester United. The score was 4-0 going on five and even six wouldn't have flattered John McGovern's team.

Up in the stand, Ally MacLeod gathered information for his World Cup squad. He must have loved what he saw. Afterwards a local photographer collared the Scotland manager and asked how many of the City Ground Scots would be making his squad for Argentina. "All of them," said MacLeod. To the snapper, a business opportunity lit up in front of his eyes.

He got on the phone to Brian Clough, asked if there was any chance of getting the manager in a picture with McGovern, John Robertson, Kenny Burns and Archie Gemmill. He'd bring four kilts for the boys and he'd have a scoop on his hands, ready to go the minute MacLeod revealed his picks for the World Cup.

Clough obliged. So did the players. But MacLeod didn't. When he named his squad there was no sign of McGovern. The photographer was out of pocket big time. Didn't MacLeod know the price of hired kilts! He got in touch with the Scotland manager and asked why he didn't stay true to his word and pick all the Scots at the City Ground.

"I did," said MacLeod.

"What about McGovern?" protested the snapper.

"McGovern's Scottish?" replied MacLeod.

John McGovern tells that story now with a bit of a chuckle but he wasn't laughing back then. "Takes some believing, eh? I was very, very disappointed." He hadn't got his hopes up until the guy came calling with the kilts but it was only reasonable to dream at that point. "I'm thinking, 'Well at least I've made the squad' but it wasn't to be. Although we know they did brilliantly when they went to South America, eh! Oh, I would have walked to Scotland for just one cap. I know I speak in an English accent but I was born in Scotland and spent the first seven years of my life there. Never won a cap. I had to content myself with a cupboard full of medals instead. Reasonable consolation to be fair. I lifted two European Cups as captain. I'm the only Scot to have done it. Possibly the only Scotsman who will ever do it."

He did it, for the first time, 30 years ago this week. Consider how football has changed. It's the playground of billionaires now. Manchester United and Barcelona in the Champions League final on Wednesday night, Chelsea and Arsenal in the semi-finals. In 1979 the semis line-up was Forest versus Cologne, Malmo versus Austria Vienna. Forest had three Scots in the starting team for the final (McGovern, Robertson and Burns) and two more on the bench (Gemmill and John O'Hare). Their captain was born in Montrose, praised to the high heavens by as demanding a manager as Clough and yet ignored by his national team. What a different world that was back then.

McGovern's career was a remarkable one, his association with Clough one of the great connections in the history of the English game. Clough had him at Hartlepool in the 1960s where McGovern made his league debut at 16, signed him for Derby and made him captain, signed him during his ill-fated 44 days at Leeds and brought him to Forest in 1975 and made him captain again.

"He tried to sign me at Brighton as well but I turned him down. He tapped me up on the phone but I said, 'You're in the Third Division'. He slammed the phone down on me. He phoned me back ten minutes later and said, 'I'll make you captain'. I said, 'But you're still in the Third Division'. He slammed the phone down on me again. Then a month later he signed me to play for him at Leeds United.

"I was one of these players that people found it difficult to understand what I did because I was very subtle in what I did, very economic. I knew that if I was losing a match 3-0 I'd be doing my utmost to turn that around whereas certain players I played with, some internationals among them, you couldn't find when we were 3-0 down away from home in January somewhere. I was always at it. I suppose you'd call it leading by example.

"We were together a long time but I never got close to him, not at all. He was my manager, I worked for him and he was brilliant to work for, inspirational and frightening in almost equal amounts. He saw things in me that other managers didn't and that was his genius. He was such a clever, clever man."

Thirty years. Does it seem that long ago? Actually, it does. But the memory of it all is still strong, the recollection of the Forest culture burned indelibly into his soul. They won the First Division in '78, an astonishing achievement. They closed it out with a 0-0 draw at Coventry and Clough went in the dressing room with a long face.

"Congratulations boss," said McGovern. "We're champions!"

"Champions?" said Clough. "Oh, right. I suppose we are."

The performance at Coventry had been average. Not up to scratch in the manager's view. Disappointment was the overriding feeling, not elation. Those were the standards he set. He wanted perfection and when he didn't get it, well, he wasn't fulfilled, championship or no championship.

When Forest were drawn against Liverpool in the first round of the European Cup nobody gave them a chance. Forest might have won the league but Liverpool had been kings of Europe two years running and that was the form line that everybody went on. "It was our first appearance in the European Cup and the media weren't that kind to us. They thought we had an inspirational manager, a couple of decent players and then some also-rans and journeymen. That's what was said. We'd come out of nowhere. The bubble will burst. The press were looking down their noses at us a little bit because we were the upstarts."

Forest beat Liverpool 2-0 in the first leg and drew 0-0 in the second. Then they walloped AEK Athens and Grasshoppers of Zurich. In the semi-final they drew Cologne, double winners in Germany the previous season. Cologne played brilliantly in a 3-3 draw in the first leg in Nottingham. Now the doubters returned.

Clough was hit by the negativity of the media's questioning in the aftermath. He looked straight into the lens of a BBC man's camera and said: "We have to go to Germany now and win. I hope nobody's stupid enough to think we won't do it."

They did it, 1-0. They were in the final now. Incredibly, they were joined there by the unknowns of Malmo, conquerors of Monaco, Dynamo Kiev, Wisla Krakow and Austria Vienna. All the big boys had fallen. Juventus, winners of the previous two Serie A titles and never out of the top two in their domestic league in seven years, had been beaten by Rangers. Real Madrid, winner of three of the previous four La Ligas, had been taken out by Grasshoppers. PSV, UEFA Cup champions the season before, had also been dumped by Rangers who in turn were eliminated by Cologne.

"The Spanish and Germans and Italians were all in for it but they were all knocked out. So it was a surprise package final and a two-thirds full Olympic Stadium in Munich was testimony to that. I didn't think we could be beaten to be honest with you. I had such faith in my team."

The team did not include Gemmill and the Scot never forgave Clough for leaving him out. "Archie and Martin O'Neill were struggling with injury but both of them passed fitness tests on the morning of the final and they reported back to Cloughie. 'Boss, we're 100% and raring to go'. Then Cloughie said, 'Gentlemen, I'm delighted for the pair of you. You're on the bench'. Their heads went down immediately but the rest of us just carried on."

Malmo had terrible problems. Their two main centre-backs were injured and their captain was forced to play with a broken toe. They only had four fit subs on the bench, so their gameplan was straightforward. Defend and defend and hope for penalties.

John Robertson's run and Trevor Francis's back-post header put paid to that just before half-time and the final was as good as over at that point. Malmo never posed a threat and for some reason Forest weren't bright enough on the night to turn on the style.

"As soon as the final whistle went there was jubilation and an adrenaline rush because you know you've won the thing. But then you get back in the dressing room and there's a reflection and that's when the disappointment kicked in. Yeah, disappointment. We wished we'd done it better. We knew we could have done it better.

"It was very quiet in the dressing room after. If you look at Cloughie when the final whistle goes there's video of him just standing there with a straight face. No emotion at all. That's what he was like in the dressing room. We thought we were miles better than they were and we wanted to prove it. We sat there as a group and we wished we'd done it more convincingly because we knew we were a better side than the performance we'd put on. I suppose that was a reflection of the manager's standards. We didn't just want to win, we wanted to win with glory. We wanted to do it all."

That was Clough's philosophy and he was Clough's captain. Proud and true to this day.